Listen to this article

This article is from today’s FT Opinion email. Sign up to receive a daily digest of the big issues straight to your inbox.

Human beings will have to alter their behaviour very quickly if they wish to have any chance of limiting the global average temperature rise to less than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Life on earth will continue if that limit is ignored, but, argues Martin Wolf in his column this week, not as we know it.

The world urgently needs to shift to a different investment and growth path, Martin argues. Given that this is technically feasible, inaction ought not to be an option. The problem, he concludes, is that in a nationalistic world, the prospects for the kind of co-operation required are vanishingly small.

Responding to anxieties about his country’s economic slowdown, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa announces a wide-ranging series of reforms designed to attract foreign investment.

Brooke Masters examines the fight over data roiling Wall Street between the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, on the one hand, and the US’s biggest brokers on the other.

Courtney Weaver writes that, as America approaches the midterm elections, partisan feuds are splitting some of the country’s most prominent political families.

You can now listen to our top stories every morning from your smart speaker

We have just launched a new audio show called FT News Briefing, a short, 5-8 minute daily rundown of the top global stories you need to know for the coming day. The show is available both as a flash briefing for your smart speaker (“OK Google, what’s the news from the FT?”) and as a daily podcast. You can find out how to listen here.

What you’ve been saying

On Saturday I marched through London with a crowd whose huge number must have moved the dial, even if slightly, towards making it politically acceptable to consider formally revisiting national opinion. Just as plans are being made for a hard Brexit, would it not be wise for the government to set up a team to frame plans and wording for a second referendum should the government or parliament later require another people’s vote?

Indeed, Trump is the perfect lightning rod for all the unhappy Americans of our age. The only thing I can’t quite recall is, in the midst of a glorious economic boom such as this one, have there always been so many unhappy people?

I very much enjoyed Richard Haass’s insightful op-ed on Saudi Arabia ( “The US must shed its illusions about Saudi Arabia’s crown prince”). However his list of criticisms of Saudi Arabia includes “the Saudis failed to bring Israelis and Palestinians together”. Excuse me? Such failure is shared by the US, most of Europe, Egypt and Jordan. Individuals who have failed include Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and a host of others.